


Much Like Macedonia

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Community: buffyverse1000, Libraries, M/M, Pre-Series, Teacher/Student-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-20
Updated: 2004-12-20
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:32:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They met in a library.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Much Like Macedonia

There's a section of books, right behind the Macedonian literature, that is strictly off-limits to undergrads, doubly so, it would seem, for exchange students from America, and trebly so for Daniel, because Daniel's already got into quite a lot of trouble here, more trouble than you'd think you could get in at a library.

Daniel has his suspicions about this library, though, which he's filed in his mental filing cabinet of conspiracy theories between Pyramids Older Than We Think and Perhaps Grandfather Not Insane, After All, Just Heartless.

The librarian has confronted him twice for trying to sneak into the forbidden section of books, staring at him over the rims of his glasses and using an icily quiet voice to tell him it would be wisest to stay away from those books. Which reminds Daniel, the librarian, another trip and a half. His knowledge of certain ancient languages is precise and literary, and his Sumerian is so good they once had a conversation in runes, passing them back and forth across the circulation desk, talking about the price of cattle and the ebb of the Tigris, because, truthfully, Sumerian isn't the greatest language for carrying on conversations in.

But the librarian is smart, in the strange, heavily memorized British way that seems so common here. But he's got something else about him, another layer, like he's got multiple secrets and is trying to keep them from intersecting. It's a mystery, all right, and solving it is less likely to get his borrowing privileges revoked than sneaking around behind Macedonia.

So one evening, around eleven, when there's no one around but Daniel, the librarian (Mr. Giles) and a sad-looking student with blue eyes, Daniel asks the librarian to pop down to the pub for a pint, and then both of them laugh at him for having gone practically native.

They talk about research mostly, and Daniel doesn't realize until much later that he's doing most, all right, all, of the talking. Mr. Giles just sits and nurses a drink for an impossibly long time and tuts approvingly. He seems to like Daniel, and to approve of his line of thinking, which is a first.

Daniel doesn't mention that he's only seventeen; even though he was planning on being forthright, it suddenly feels like the kind of time when you don't want to be totally honest about your age with the nice older gentleman buying drinks.

He feels a change between them when he says, "And what if gods are real? Not God, not that, I don't believe in Christianity or anything, but gods. Lowercase gods. What if there's something more to cross-pollenization of cultures than just pollen. What if there's, you know, something else, some universal constant that... "

"What do you know?" says Giles, suddenly, his hand resting on Daniel's as he leans forward. "You know something."

Daniel blinks at him. "Uh, I know lots of things. Anything in particular?" and suddenly he feels rude and young and American.

Giles leans back, seemingly content, but something has changed between them, something tangible. Daniel reaches for Giles's hand. "Come back to my apartment," he says, like he says it a dozen times every week, and Giles laughs.

"I'm rather too old for you," he says, and takes another tiny sip of his drink. "And I haven't the best track record with relationships."

"Yeah," says Daniel. He thinks about fifteen foster homes, fifteen rejections. He's nervous suddenly. "Or we could, you know, not." HIs nervousness hides an odd shade of calm. Whenever he tries to ask a girl out, his tongue gets tied in knots and he starts to sweat like crazy, but with Giles, it's different.

"No, no. It's fine. Nothing very serious, mind," and even while he's saying this will be a one-night stand, Giles sounds like he's lecturing a class about the dangers of failing to properly punctuate.

They walk back to Daniel's place, talking about nothing at all, Giles still using his pretentious academic lecture voice. Daniel knows there's something hidden, there's got to be, and he wonders, in the back of his mind, if screwing Giles will get the secret out of him.

The first secret Daniel unearths is Giles's first name. It's Rupert. It sounds wonderful and gravelly in his mouth when he says it, between kisses. The transformation to passionate lover is strange, sudden, a little heady, like the thick English beer he's been drinking.

It's not his first time, not his second, but his stomach still churns a little when he leans into Giles, when he feels tongues intertwine.

Giles is a little bit magical, he thinks, and laughs at his own absurdity, and then Giles laughs too, a full-bellied laugh that would be a sacrilege in the library but that feels just right here. Giles laughs when he strips off layers of tweed and then a white undershirt, when Daniel twirls strands of brown hair between his fingers, working his way down to Rupert's dick. Laughs, and growls, and manages somehow to shout the right name – even if he does say, "Jackson," and not Daniel – when he comes.

Later Daniel wonders why he didn't call him that other name – Ethan – the one he whispers in his sleep. Why Rupert agreed to go to bed with him at all if he thought he was a government agent about to uncover his secret identity – whatever that might be. Why Giles looks at him alternately like he's edible and like he's untouchable, why Giles continues to come to his apartment night after night, why Giles is working at a library and letting the books and the research and the reading slowly eat away at his eyesight and his soul, but no matter how many clues he gets, no matter how many subtly dropped hints he picks up and examines, he can never get a better picture of Giles than the last one, right before he leaves to do fieldwork in Wales, of Giles standing next to the forbidden section, right next to Macedonian literature, marking his place in a book with his left hand while his right hand cups the back of Daniel's neck.

It's their last kiss, and their first library kiss, and it feels oddly appropriate, musty and dank, but wild with hidden depths, much like Giles himself.


End file.
